At 07:58 11/08/99 -0400, you wrote:
> >From what I have seen - even with the best of the breed - you must pronounce
>and enunciate (here comes the kicker) CONSISTENTLY in order for the software
>to understand what you are saying.  You must also learn new speech patterns
>with... distinct... breaks... between... words.... otherwise, if you get in
>a hurry
>and runitalltogether, the software will not understand.
>But they ARE getting better with each new version.  The latest crop that I
>have seen at trade shows ARE impressive.  (But then the guy demonstrating
>has had LOTS of practice. <grin>)

I agree with all of what Jim has said.

I have Dragon Dictate - top of range version on a machine lent to me for 6
months. So I didn't pay for it and also have had plenty of time to train.

I am a self taught 6 finger typist who can get around about a reasonable
amount of speed but I still look at the keyboard.

I was very keen for the voice stuff to work as I envisaged it being
especially useful for first drafts and notes from references.

However I found it just takes too much energy to make it work reasonably
well and in fact it was slowing me down.

I have a Pent 11 223 with 64 MB Ram and a good sound card.

I went to a local PC expo and cornered the Dragon Sales rep who was doing
spiffy demos. I asked him what was the real secret to making it work.
After training - which is of course vital, he said the secret is RAM, RAM
and more ram. I pushed him for his honest answer and he said that in
reality 128 MB of ram was really minimum for a good performance - with 256
MB RAM being more like what is required for spiffy operation.

Hope this helps.
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